@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

bosak

@bosak@flx.masto.host

Retired standards expert living in upstate NY. Photographer. Writer. Gardener. Syndicalist. Animist. Secular doomer. Occasional mystic. Member of The Things Network Ithaca. Proprietor of Medicine Spring LLC. Father of XML and UBL, but they left home a long time ago (ibiblio.org/bosak/cv). FCC Third Class Radiotelephone License (expired). Currently auditing courses in philosophy at SUNY Binghamton and Cornell.

Γῆς παῖς ἠμι καὶ Οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος

#photography #filmphotography

tfr

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

bosak, to photography
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

1/

Roll eps16 (cont.): Parsons College, Fairfield, Iowa (June 1966)

In two years of living at Parsons, this was the first time I had ever seen a man and a woman together on campus. He is of course a senior, and the girl is just visiting for graduation.

This wasn't because there were no women students, you understand. But unless you were an upperclassman and had a car, there was no way you'd ever get to interact with them.

bosak, to photography
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

Roll eps16: Parsons College, Fairfield, Iowa (May 1966)

Making music for each other was an essential way to pass the time. Several of my roommates played stringed instruments; some played more than one. I developed a lifelong love of folk and old-time music from rooming with these guys.

Skip and Drew.
Skip and someone who dropped by to jam.

iraantlers, to random
@iraantlers@mastodon.online avatar

here to gad, cadge, and sneer gormless, formless & feckless in y’all’s abyss

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

@iraantlers how ironic

bosak, to photography
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

Roll eps14 (cont.): Parsons College, Fairfield, Iowa (May 1966)

Don, Skip, and FUBAR (the house cat).

Don plays the banjo.
Skip can also play banjo.
Don and Skip jam behind the house.

bosak, to photography
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

1/

Rolls eps11 (cont.) and eps12: Parsons College, Fairfield, Iowa (May 1966)

A student protest -- the first, I think, in the history of the college. Apparently something to do with discussion of the school's academic problems in the student newspaper.

This is what student protests looked like before administrators started to use armed force to suppress them.

Set One: Protesters and administrators.

Administrators.

bosak, to photography
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

1/

Roll eps09 (cont.): Parsons College, Fairfield, Iowa (May 1966)

Scenes around the house. Tech note follows.

Bob, studying.
Duncan and another house cat.
Drew. It's significant that he's got something other than Playboy Playmates on his wall.

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

2/

This roll and the next (eps10) are technically interesting. I had apparently treated some of the strips with mercury intensifier, which turns the silver image yellow. I scanned the negs as RGB and then converted the neg image to b&w after turning the yellow channel all the way down and the blue all the way up, emulating the spectral response of print paper. Some edge effects can be seen in places.

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

3/

Mercury intensifier is a combination of hydrochloric acid and potassium dichromate (corrosive, poisonous, and "acutely and chronically harmful to health" -- Wikipedia). I bought mine in little packets from the same drugstore that provided the rest of my supplies. Another reminder of the very different world of photography half a century ago. It was simply assumed that you were not an idiot -- or wouldn't last long if you were.

bosak, to photography
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

1/

Roll eps08, cont.: Parsons College, Fairfield, Iowa (May 1966)

Something happening at the gym!

Moving closer.

analog_cafe, to BelieveInFilm
@analog_cafe@mas.to avatar

Nikon CoolScan update. This is my second attempt at getting one. It got some damage during shipping due to insufficient packaging but it works.

It takes about 40s to scan a single frame with the 5000ED, compared to 4min with PrimeFilm XAs. CoolScan has a slightly lower resolution (tho it shows about the same amount of detail) than XA. CoolScan makes more saturated negative scans.

It’s wild how much better this 20yo scanner is than my 2yo one.

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

@analog_cafe You will be happy with the 5000. They are wonderfully built little machines. The finish reminds me of a SparcStation.

I love my LS-9000 (I have a mixture of 135 and 120 to process), but as the 35mm transport becomes increasingly shaky, I become increasingly interested in finding some place where I could get it repaired. Does anyone fix these nowadays?

technewslit, to photography
@technewslit@journa.host avatar

Photo-shoot today: Punchbowl News Rural Health Summit, featuring Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) and former Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy.

Photos ... https://technewslitphoto.smugmug.com/DC-and-region/Punchbowl-News-Rural-Health

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

@technewslit I like the feeling that you've captured personalities here.

mathling, to random
@mathling@mastodon.social avatar

Dear fellow Californians, before you roll your eyes and laugh at how all a-twitter the NYC crowd is getting about a small earthquake, bear in mind what passes for a "storm" to our local weather reporters and the breathless excitement engendered by a dusting of snow on Mt. Hamilton

Let's all be kind

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

@mathling I laughed too, but the fact is that a real earthquake up where I live would be an almost unimaginable disaster. Half the built environment is unreinforced masonry -- brick -- that would just turn to powder in the real thing. So the nervousness isn't completely unjustified.

technewslit, to photography
@technewslit@journa.host avatar

First time I've seen one of these guys ... a pileated woodpecker, Banneker Park in Arlington, Va.

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

@technewslit Nice shot! They don't like to hang around people.

mathling, to genart
@mathling@mastodon.social avatar

interlude

Fun with letterforms

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

@mathling I suspect that this would be a great deal more difficult, but could you render an entire long (possibly meaningful) string this way? Like, a line of poetry that artistically connects with (or opposes) the style and deployment of the letter forms?

bosak, to photography
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

1/

No Christmas shopping in 1972 was complete without a drive two hours each way to Tower Records in L.A., so Melanie and I mounted an expedition with our friend Susy and our roommate Karen. The first stop was lunch at one of my favorite restaurants in the world, Canter's Fairfax, which happens to be in the neighborhood in which Melanie grew up.

Planning the afternoon.
Fish.
Kosher franks.

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

2/

timeout (one more pic at end)

The two people shots are great examples of an effect of 2475 Recording Film. All three women look like they have an identical shade of skin. In fact, as you will see in pictures to come, Susy (in the middle) actually had a lovely olive Mediterranean complexion. They all look alike here because it's not just their epidermis that you're seeing in the photos.

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

3/

The red sensitivity of 2475 extended far enough into the near-infrared that it could record light penetrating the skin slightly. So what you're seeing is not only the outer surface of the skin but also light reflected from the layer just underneath.

(insert joke here about how we're all the same under our skin)

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

4/

Waitresses at Canter's were something special.

Waitress: What'll ya have, honey?

Me: (names a menu item)

Waitress: Nah, you don't want that. You want the blintzes.

bosak, to random
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

1/

IN WHICH I PUBLISH A SCHOLARLY PAPER ONLINE

After eight years of undergraduate education (it's a long story), I finally graduated more or less by chance with a BA in Philosophy. But my interests were in epistemology, symbolic logic, and the philosophers of the Enlightenment, so I never did take a course specifically about Plato or Aristotle.

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

2/

In 2021, I remedied this by taking Philosophy 201, Plato and Aristotle, at SUNY Binghamton. At one point, I mistook the endpoint of one of our readings in an exceedingly tedious dialog of Plato's titled Parmenides and plowed on into what appeared to be an interesting bit about numbers. Plato seems to say that all the numbers (the positive integers) can be generated from 1, 2, and 3 by multiplication.

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

3/

As Aristotle pointed out, this process leaves out all of the prime numbers (as well as all of the composite numbers with factors other than 1, 2, or 3, beginning with 10, 14, and so on).

Scholars have puzzled over this ever since. Plato loved math, and it's difficult to imagine him making such an obvious mistake.

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

4/

After poking at this for a bit, I realized that in fact there is a way to generate all of the numbers (the positive integers) from just the first three without using multiplication. In fact, without even going so far as counting or using arithmetic as we understand it at all. It just depends on what you mean by "number." To the ancient Greeks, "number" meant what we would call a "set."

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

5/

So I wrote a little paper about my discovery. And then it occurred to me to try to get it published. A couple of early reviewers were encouraging, so I spent the next year (seriously slowed by the pandemic) doing the necessary search of the literature and putting the piece in proper scholarly form.

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

6/

The paper has since received three very serious anonymous expert reviews, each of which has strengthened it enormously; but it has become clear that the piece is too cross-disciplinary to find a respectable venue. There just isn't a home (in English) for something that combines ancient philosophy with the mathematics of Gottlob Frege, the archaeology of number systems, and the psychology of subitization.

bosak,
@bosak@flx.masto.host avatar

7/

I must, therefore, cast my bread upon the waters and trust search engines to eventually find the few people who might be interested lurking in the long tail of the internet.

Keywords: #philosophy #plato #parmenides #numberTheory #subitization

https://ibiblio.org/bosak/pub/numbers-parmenides-20240331.pdf

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • provamag3
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • InstantRegret
  • magazineikmin
  • ngwrru68w68
  • Durango
  • thenastyranch
  • Youngstown
  • rosin
  • slotface
  • tacticalgear
  • mdbf
  • ethstaker
  • JUstTest
  • khanakhh
  • osvaldo12
  • GTA5RPClips
  • cubers
  • cisconetworking
  • everett
  • tester
  • modclub
  • megavids
  • Leos
  • normalnudes
  • anitta
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •